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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28250679">Sunt Lacrimae Rerum</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mauser_Frau/pseuds/Mauser_Frau'>Mauser_Frau</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Borderlands (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Backstory, Complex relationships, Deceased parent, Gen, Heavy Drinking, Mostly Canon Compliant, Pretentious Literary References, Relationship Study, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Typhon being a dirtbag, Tyreen being Tyreen, Underage Drinking, Violence, children acting out inappropriately, emotional child abuse, the Calypso Twins have some weird nostalgia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:53:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,029</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28250679</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mauser_Frau/pseuds/Mauser_Frau</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyreen and Troy still cherish some memories of their father.  Why and how and what, that's complicated.  </p><p>Part of the Nekrotafeyo portion of <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Grimeverse/profile">Grimeverse</a>, but also works well on it's own if you don't mind some odd 'verse details about, say, Troy's teeth.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Grimeverse</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sunt Lacrimae Rerum</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>I.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tell me a story.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She tugs on Dad’s pant leg. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen is four, annoyingly small.  She can’t reach half of what she wants.  Her voice comes out so shrill it bothers her.  She should sound louder and deeper, kind of like Dad.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dad has a nice voice.  She can hear him from across the homestead, even when he isn’t calling to tell her that he picked her a lucerna to munch on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Lucernae and their moth-pollen are Tyreen’s favorites.  They taste so good both ways she eats, like sunshower season smells, but like insides too.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dad gobbles her up in his arms.  He gives her a bounce, and bops his big, soft nose on her tiny one.  “Well, is that a fact, little lady? Do you think I’m made of stories?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen nods.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughs like that’s the most wonderful thing he’s ever heard.  It should be.  She’s repeating him funning with Mama the other night and saying just that.  He </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> made of stories.  He said so, anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Then what is Mama made of? And Troy? Tyreen knows about herself, just not the words.  Well, Dad brought her a lucerna the other night, so the answer must sound like insides and sunshowers.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, is that a fact? What kinda story should I tell you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want a love story,” says Tyreen.  She bats her fingertips together. “But, but, but! Not a sad love story like Mama tells.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dad sweeps her over to the firepit.  It’s banked down to embers underneath the shimmering dust that sweeps around the sky, the insects bothering the night.  He plops her in Mama’s place, the good beside him spot that’s just a little too high up.  “Aww,” he says, “But I thought you liked the Beren and Luzianne story? You sure crawled out of my lap enough when mama got to the big fight scene.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Tyreen insists.  “It made me sad.  They were really stupid.  They should have told Thingol to go suck an egg and left in a spaceship and wrecked it someplace happy where nobody would ever find them!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He blinks at her with his person-eye.  Then he snorts and starts to laugh.  “So you think… you think they should have run away on a spaceship and lived in a Vault.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Vaults are way cooler than the Halls of Mandos! Also! Also! They didn’t get to do anything fun.  They just got dead and they made </span>
  <em>
    <span>me</span>
  </em>
  <span> sad and…” Tyreen thinks Dad isn’t listening right.  She drums her heels on the bench.  A pout forms on her mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, I think so, but I’ve never been to the Halls of Mandos and apparently us humans don’t come back from there without special permission.  Not that I couldn’t get that.  I think your Dad’s smarter than a stick-in-the-mud psychochomp… dead… person… minder… thing.  It’s not important.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nonetheless, she nods.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But now, you know what </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> important?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen shakes her head.  She leans in so close, her hands balled up and quivering.  This idea excites her.  Something important, just for her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All love stories are kinda sad.  ‘Cause being in love? That’s a sad thing.  You give up part of </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>if you’re in love and you don’t ever really get it back.  That’s why people tell adventure stories with romance in ‘em.  Like that Beren guy getting rocks for his lady? That’s showing people he already gave the rocks in his heart away for her.” He glances up to the stars, ever so briefly for that.  His smile is fat and happy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen looks too.  She looks so hard.  She has so many questions.  Couldn’t Luzianne share her rocks too and just tell everybody off? What did Mama give up for Dad? Or what about the other way around? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dad leans down beside her.  He whispers, “Don’t ever fall in love.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One more time, she nods, too enchanted with the idea to do otherwise.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anyway, let me tell you a </span>
  <em>
    <span>good </span>
  </em>
  <span>love story.  One that’s true too!” Dad sits back.  He shifts out of Dad and becomes the person who knows all these tales and yarns and strange other pieces of the universe.  “So there was this poor farm kid named Barrow.  He grew up sleeping under wagons and cracking safes, as you do.  It’s a totally legitimate career path when the whole world’s against you, and ohhhh, it was in Barrow’s case.  Why, he’d no sooner met the girl of his dreams than he got sent to the slammer.  He </span>
  <em>
    <span>didn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> get to spend the winter drinking hot chocolate with his lady and he had to know she was out there someplace in the world with no work and no lovings.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen understands that lovings are different from being in love, and that one doesn’t always require the other.  After all, she gets lovings from Dad, like she does now, him resting his hand on her head and stroking through her curls, softly and simply.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Besides, prison’s a real mean place.  Makes that clink on Eden-6 sound like a vacation.  Why he had to beat the guy who was pestering him with a pipe to get him to stop.  And he lost part of his foot.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen gasps.  How does somebody just lose part of their foot? She’ll need more details on this for certain, but later.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But you know who was waiting for him when he got out? His sweet hot chocolate Mama and her name was Parker.  So Barrow says to Parker, let’s you and me and some of our buddies and also my M1918 Browning go get some revenge.  It’ll be fun.  And Parker, she was the best lady.  She said yes right away.  To her, that sounded way funner than being married or waiting tables or going back to prison.  So off they went in their big, black mobster car.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He gets to the murders in another minute.  To Tyreen, this is the most romantic thing she’s ever heard.  She wonders though, if she falls in love by accident, will she have to give her Leech away? She doesn’t think she can do that. Nosiree.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So no fancy guns and hot chocolate for her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or maybe she is in love? Her and that bright blue nothingness that thrills in her belly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A cry breaks soft across the night.  It’s none of the bugs or beasts she knows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She looks back to the entrance of the homestead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dad cups his hands behind her ears, tugging her attention back.  “Don’t you worry about your brother.  There’s nothing you can do.  Just listen.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen shrugs.  She reaches her tiny hand up into the night.  The glowbugs think her marks are more of them that they can have for friends or maybe lovers.  They sit on her and they die one by one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their sand flows down her wrist and into Dad’s lap.  Except for one.  That one leaves a glass bead behind instead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oops!” says Tyreen.  She knows that glass shatters and once it does it hurts her little fingers and toes.  She knows she isn’t fast enough to catch this piece.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dad smushes her to his side.  He snaps down, surprisingly quick for something so round.  He catches the bead and rolls it over and over between his heavy fingers, checking for sharp places.  “Well if that isn’t the cutest little magic trick.  Good job, Starlight.” He hands the bead back to her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen hardly ever gets pieces like this out of her snacks.  She’s oddly proud of herself.  Besides— “It’s the butt! My favorite part.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You and me both.” Dad laughs.  “Now where was I.  Oh right, so.  Killing a cop was huge trouble for our lovebirds, especially all ugly like they did it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen, not knowing what a cop is or should look like, can only picture a corpse overgrown with flowery mold.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>~*~</span>
</p><p>
  <span>II.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s nearly sixteen and this has gone on long enough: wasting most of the night pacing back and forth outside the entryway.  Tyreen’s out stalking something under the stars.  The robots have taken up a perimeter check with mantas of size spotted close to the homestead.  Must have been that last rainy season drawing out more twins, or his sister’s sudden insistence that she’ll be gone for a night or two on her own, chasing down ‘something else’ in the wilderness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s come home beaten and bloody already, but she does come home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy is coming home tonight too in a metaphorical sort of way.  He thinks.  He hopes.  If he can just get himself together for a few minutes.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Well</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he tells himself, scrubbing his fingers on his jeans, </span>
  <em>
    <span>if my sister can hunt megafauna on her own, then I can do this</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He coughs.  He marches into the vault and towards the place in the front room where he last heard his father grumbling at his view screens.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>An old movie flickers there, paused on an incidental shot of a hallway.  Dad’s eyes are closed.  He gurgles and groans to himself.  A freshly emptied bottle of rye lolls alongside the couch, dripping and pungent.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy rolls it between his bare toes.  The reflection in the uneven glass looks more like a person’s foot than his actual body does, but that strikes him familiar.  He has never </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>experienced his body from his view.  Anyway, he stands the bottle up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He says,  “Hey, Dad? You awake?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Typhon DeLeon slumbers on for a few more moments.  Mantas whistle at each other in the dark outside the borders of the homestead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy considers pressing his hand to his shoulder.  He’s barely touched the man since Mama died.  Doing it now seems like it’d be impious of him.  He repeats himself instead.  “Dad.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Typhon snorts.  He stirs in subtle ways Troy only knows as a body coming awake since he’s seen animals do it.  “What d’ya wan’?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tell me a story.” He beams down at his father through the dimness and the scan lines.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Typhon opens his good eye.  He snorts.  He closes it again.  One of his big hands shifts across his shirt to scratch.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought it was worth trying,” Troy says, soft enough that he knows he can be ignored.  “I’m sorry.  I’ll go.” He turns to do just that.  His body still rushes with the will it took to ask at all and he wasn’t expecting much.  So there’s no sadness, not yet anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Typhon snatches after him.  Troy senses it as a change in the air rather than a touch. “Wait, no. Siddown,” Dad slurs.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy sits, squeezing himself into the space at the far end of the couch, his arm bunched up at his side.  His father sways somewhat upright, staring blearily around the dimness.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Typhon’s bones creek and so does the couch.  He swallows a mouthful of snot, though a little still glistens in his whiskers.  “What kinda story you want?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Whatever you want to…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s not an answer!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“T-then tell me something close to your heart.  Kinda like…” A shiver crosses Troy’s frame.  He doesn’t want to reference his sister or the stories she still gets to choose sometimes, the ones they both hear together on some nights.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“OK.  Guess that’s a thing this old man can do.” He wipes his face on his hand or his hand on his face.  “How ‘bout a love story.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy nods.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a sad one though. See, once upon a time there was this guy named Typhon DeLeon.  And he loved adventure, more than even the prettiest dame.  He met a lot of pretty dames though catting around the universe.  A couple of narcissy-types too, if he’s being honest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is new.  Troy tucks the information carefully away, as though the mere idea might somehow live only in the most fragile circumstances of belief. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But he started getting long in the tooth, like all adventuring-types do.  Went back to his farm and told himself he was gonna settle down.  And maybe he did, sort of, for a while.  Not like anything ever stays quiet on Pandora, at least not for long.  So, he met this girl.  She was like half his age.  And crazy.  Just </span>
  <em>
    <span>crazy</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  Smart too.  Pretty as a picture.  Maybe he knew he was done in.  Maybe he knew giving away his heart’s the follishest thing a man can do.  Maybe he did it anyway.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shifts, retrieving another bottle from the empty space in the couch springs.  He turns it over and over in the wan light from the viewscreen.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not so many dames in the Six Galaxies who’ll take part of a power coil for a wedding ring.  Even less who’d be happy about it.  But this Typhon DeLeon guy, he found one and they had some lovings.  They had some fun.  Since there was some fun left in the old guy.  So much, you know what that Leda dame decided to give him for her part of this whole fucked up thing that is romance?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It takes Troy a moment to answer, since he has also never heard his father say </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span> before, at least not so plainly.  Besides, he thinks he knows the answer and he wants to make sure he says it as rightly as possible.  “A baby.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The venom in the look that follows.  If his father wasn’t drunk onto yawning, it would startle him.  “A </span>
  <em>
    <span>son</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  She promised me a son.  She promised to rip herself apart so I could have a boy.  And you.  You just spit on that.  You </span>
  <em>
    <span>rat</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Rat’s more a choke than a word.  “‘Cause rats, they eat their own.  Literally.  It’s horrible and I’ve been to wars, so I know what horrible is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy only knows rats and wars as concepts.  He understands them more as figures of speech.  To him, in his idea of his father, he finds their use oddly poetical.  Besides, tonight has brought out more words than the man has said to him in years.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re </span>
  <em>
    <span>talking</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  “Yeah? That’s about what Mom said too.  She just put it a little different.” Besides there’s so much freshness here, bits and pieces of more stories.  He laughs because he cannot help himself.  The sound crackles out of him as he shoves away the ache in his heart, heat in his cheeks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Which Typhon feels in the next instant.  He is still quick, sometimes between his moods and liquor.  His bottle-cold hand bites into Troy’s face, squeezing in a way that tilts his jaw open.  “Don’t laugh with your mouth open.  Boy, you have the nastiest teeth I’ve ever seen.  How do you even eat with those?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know.  I just do!” The sound is garbled under his father’s grip.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This lasts a shake of the man’s head.  He drops back to his side of the couch where he fusses with the cork in the bottle.  “It’s disgusting.  And I grew up on a literal turd farm.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know.  You used to tell us about it all the time.  It was fun.  I miss it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, that’s over and done with.  Has been since she died.  I guess that’s irony.  The thing she wanted to give me took her away.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s situational irony.” Troy still chuckles.  His throat aches.  His lungs need to reach so much further than they do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just me and your sister and your dumb ass for the rest of forever.” The cork comes out.  Typhon gives the bottle a shake, then turns it upside down.  There’s not even a runnell of residue left.  He removes it to the floor with the other and he looks Troy in the eye.  “Get me another.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy nods.  He does that, moving swiftly on his feet like when he does picking up a chase out in the wilds.  There should be more bottles in the carete nearby.  He finds them, and rifles for a full one which he offers Typhon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man stares at him, his eyes tracing over Troy’s markings before he accepts.  The cork sloshes out of this one and whiskey shines down his throat, his hands.  This batch smells strong of the wet afternoon that grew its rye.  Typhon drinks and drinks.  Then he shakes the bottle at Troy.  “Siddown summore.  Might as well.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy does this, slow and careful, just an inch, a heartbeat closer.  “Really?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do it.  Have a drink, Troy.  Have a big drink and wish you were with your mother.  Maybe go for a spin with a make-believe hussy in the old holo room.  Don’t come crying to me again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll start with the drink.” Troy accepts the bottle.  He has drunk before, in secret, given the odd chances Typhon would leave any swigs behind.  He’s never slugged from a bottle this full or from this batch.  He darts in carefully, doing his best not to show his teeth.  He tilts his whole self backwards.  A sweetness fills him, then chemical heat.  He takes as much into him as his aching throat will hold.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Across the couch, Typhon snorts.  “Cowardly little shit.  That’s not a swallow.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just like that, he’s coughing, laughing again.  He gestures for his father to take the bottle back so he can cover his mouth.  Most of the shot goes down.  The rest lingers on his lips, still warm.  “Wow.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Typhon drinks again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They wind closer together, mostly Troy’s doing.  He’s acting on the simple draw of another person.  Which</span>
  <span>—</span>
  <span> that’s true of everything he’s said tonight.  In his whiskey shudder, he sounds it out.  “I love you, Dad.  You know that, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s saying a rat loves me,” remarks Typhon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On that, they each fall silent.  Troy drinks until he can barely stand, but he does want to be able to leave on his own power, so he stops long before his father nods off again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He (not quite knowing any better) kisses the man on his whiskery mouth.  Then he leaves just like he knew he would.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>~*~</span>
</p><p>
  <span>III.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s been more than a day and a night since Troy has seen his sister.  The liquor left him numb, but now he feels again, a long, slow fade on his nerves where his senses blot in and out between clarity and dreamy softness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He likes this quite a bit better than being drunk, but he knows the sensation well. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He runs his hand over his mouth again.  He still feels whiskers, whispers, alcohol and not himself at all besides some shred of awareness that his skin’s going to start peeling if he keeps this up.  He folds his bottom lip inside and tests it with his teeth as best he can.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It makes him think of the night before.  Troy leans over to spit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he looks up, he sees Tyreen crouched on the lookout stone she likes, the one that stands pale in the bend in the path.  She crouches there in silence and all he can really see of her against the midnight hour is her eyes, flashing in the light from the homestead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy moves to pick himself up.  His ankles bend strangely as he does, but he slides her way, hearing his heels drag, but not really feeling his bare feet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen stares at the dust that plumes between his toes.  She smells like blood and burning plastic.  A sheen of sweat glistens between her markings as they glow, as they seem to shift as Troy pulls himself just a little bit sideways so she can see the fresh, red stain on his trousers.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s the one who says it: “Where the hell have you been?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks it should be obvious.  Don’t they both have to eat? But he stammers back, “Same to you!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Out.  So what? Didn’t I come back?” Tyreen moves to shake off the discussion.  “You really that hungry?  You know, you could have yelled ‘Oh, sister.  Come save me!’ down into the valley.  I might have showed up.  But you didn’t and now we’ll never know.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do,” though Troy doesn’t say which way he knows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She holds out her marked hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wants to reach out to take her here.  Instead, he hangs on to his pocket.  “Seriously, where have you been? You don’t even come home to bathe half the time anymore.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I said I went out.  Not like there’s a burger joint I can hit up when I get the munchies.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You could take me too, you know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Could I, Troy?” She glances away from him, sighing, then turns back to him with a sad sneer on her face.  “Aww, are you lonesome tonight?” Lonesome pulls around in her mouth so it sounds like </span>
  <em>
    <span>loathsome</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not the first time she’s used that enunciation.  Troy is almost expecting it.  And besides, it’s not half of what he’s heard, what he’s said the past few days.  “You used to take me all the time.  What happened?” he presses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing happened.  I just went out.  Drop it already.” She waves her hand, luring him into touching her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy tries so hard to resist, but he knows he won’t and that trying’s only going to drag him deeper into the too-clear haze that is him coming apart.  He takes Tyreen’s hand and he tastes.  He doesn’t even know every part of the flavors.  There’s so much life and want and being in her in that moment and then half of it is his.  He sighs.  There isn’t usually pleasure to doing this, to watching his sister’s scars flicker in the sparks of their touch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy smiles, in spite of himself.  Tyreen rips herself away.  By the time the glint clears from his eyes, she’s already put herself on the path back down into the valley.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She only stops when she hears his footsteps behind her.  Then she speaks before he can, though she does it without turning over her shoulder.  “I’m sick of him, OK?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t mean that,” Troy offers gently.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At first, she doesn’t move.  Moth-pollen traces shake out of her hair as she breathes.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next thing Troy knows, he’s lying on his back in the dust.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His sister presses one boot against his chest.  “Don’t you tell me what I mean! Don’t you fucking dare!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“OK,” Troy manages to get out.  “S-sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, you’re not! You sound just like him!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He does his best to play things off.  She’s putting more weight on his ribs by the second and he can feel his cartilage crackling faintly.  “So I sound like the Great Typhon DeLeon, Granddaddy of all Vault Hunting and Adventurer Extraordinaire.  Cool, cool.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, fuck you Troy! This isn’t funny!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Distantly, he wonders if it ever was.  His seriousness slides back into being and he sighs, asking her now instead, “Hey.  You’re really mad.  Did something happen with him and maybe you didn’t…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tell me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s gone in the next instant, her weight and her glow and even her smell.  She’s gone in the night, and not even her warmth remains somewhere underneath his heartbeat and the show print she left on his shirt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy picks himself up.  He climbs up on her rock and he looks down into the valley.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t you follow me, you miserable sack of bones! Don’t you dare!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He waits though, for an hour or a few minutes, for a star-watching while so quiet he can almost hear their father’s snores echoing through the Vault behind him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks that to him this is just home, but it’s also not just anything and hardly simple at all.  It’s like: there’s only three of them, but the space between them trickles with complex gravity.  None of them can leave the others, but the silence runs as deep as the ocean up North, as long as the waste that was supposed to keep the Vault before any children were born into it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Back when they were four and they used to sit by the firepit altogether, back when Dad told stories just because he could.  Sometimes, Troy missed them because he was sick.  Sometimes, he got to be there and the flames were so warm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy coughs.  He kicks over the old ashes and heads halfway down the path into the valley.  There he takes out his knife and he chips a few Eridian letters into the last big marrow bone still growing there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s someplace only she’ll see it.  Dad doesn’t leave the homestead much anymore.  Grouse won’t notice.  Hell, in the dimness, the words hardly make sense to him and they’re his by certain turns of imagination.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But they’re there now.  Troy takes himself to the bathhouse, trailing along a glimmer of hope, stranded somewhere in his personal night where he can’t seem to let it go.  Hope for what, he isn’t sure of that either at the moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>~*~</span>
</p><p>
  <span>0.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She loses track of herself in the wilds.  The years stop slipping away from her.  She cannot feel body struggling towards elsewhere.  There’s no real sense of time, of place, of anything but being and ‘where’ is immaterial.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sometimes, the wastes ask for her heart.  They bring her giant river mollusks wandered in from hostile temple grounds elsewhere on the planet and sunshowers that make whole gulches flush with slime.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen has considered giving her love back to the place.  It was made for her or she for it, one way around or the other.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elsewhere calls and she, not having ever gotten the chance to know that place, resists it too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She can’t hold out forever, hunting like this by herself.  Watching the stars and knowing one of them holds Pandora.  One of them wants her in a way much deeper than Nekrotafeyo is ever capable of.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She resists all of the offerings, suitors, changes. She resists, though she does still hear </span>
  <em>
    <span>him </span>
  </em>
  <span>sometimes in the back of her brain.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>All love stories are kinda sad.  ‘Cause being in love? That’s a sad thing.  You give up part of you if you’re in love and you don’t ever really get it back.  </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen sucks up another manta.  It swirls into luminous powder around her rather than leaving a corpse for more mold.  She has nothing to give.  She has trained her Leech to live as thinly as it can and still maintain two threads of life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And besides, there’s really not much left for her back at the homestead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She tells herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or the wilds tell her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or Pandora calls across the stars.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She listens, not to the pull, to the night on Nekrotafeyo, just her own skittering heartbeat like music tracking in her veins.  That might be more the memories of back when the sound system at the homestead worked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t want to go back.  Back is a man who’s lost part of his foot and the sound of her father sleeping while Troy moans in his cordoned off little wreck of a room.  Back is an empty firepit and whiffs of Mama’s perfume that still live between the cupboards.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t exactly remember returning to the foot of the path, let alone climbing it.  Her body comes this way by reflex she supposes it’s been a day or two.  Go home, Tyreen.  It’s that time again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the wastes feel more like home some days, some nights.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just maybe not now as she presses her marked hand to the scratches on the trunk of the marrow bone.  She feels the words and she moves on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen leaves her boots by the door.  No one comes to welcome her back.  No one calls her a greedy pig for drinking one of the precipitators dry.  A tracery of air coral has started to grow on the switch for the sound system.  She should probably flick it off, but it’s too small to give her more than a taste.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy dozes in his room, on his half of the mattress they cut up and patched.  She sits on the seam side, jolting him awake.  “You declenched your verb wrong.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” yawns Troy.  “Guess I got lost in the moment.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It looks really stupid.  And I don’t do that anyway, so whatever, I guess.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right.  I umm…” He rolls onto his back.  He stares at the ceiling rather than at her or anything really.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Umm, </span>
  <em>
    <span>what</span>
  </em>
  <span>? I’m not in the mood.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I meant what I wrote even if I did it wrong.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen grinds her teeth.  A stiffness surges over her spine and she has to breathe deep to put it out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy can’t reach very much of her from where he lies.  He scratches lightly at the curve of her flank where her shirt’s ridden up and her birth scar’s poked out in the glow of his nightlight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shoves him away, pinching his fingers and making the joint of the middle one pop.  Then she kicks over onto him, her wound up with his and her arms scrunched against his side, her head resting on his bare chest.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Troy holds dead still beneath her.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re such a dumbfuck,” says Tyreen.  “He can’t even touch me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess not, huh.  But he knows a couple tricks and I have an overactive imagination.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then talk about that and not him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“OK.  I was thinking.  We haven’t gotten to do anything exciting since that one hunting trip that took like a month.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anything together,” Tyreen corrects.  She peers up at him through her bangs, but snuggles back into place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah.  Yeah.  Right.  Anyway, do you want to head up North again.  We could turn West once we crossed the gulch.  I know it’ll be a while, but maybe if we start planning now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” she sighs.  “We already did that.  It’s gone.  You know like…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah.” Finally, he moves.  He rests his hand in her hair.  It brings the tension back to her spine, but something in her deepest muscles thrills.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tyreen rubs up against his touch.  It’s been a while since she let herself accept any of these innocent lovings from him.  She feels very young and small there beside him, as though the enormity of wastes and waiting has left her for the moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t tell him that.  Instead, she says, “Tell me a story.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Finis</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>AN: Brought to you by KingCharon, Wat_Are_Dis &amp; raidbossmadi.  Not for sale or rent.  Thank you for reading! Please feel welcome to drop me a line if there's anything you need/want to know about this little project.  Heh.  Little.  I crossed 100K a while ago.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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